In 2015, the idea of Transformations prompted Dionyssis Kapsalis to ask the following question: ‘Wouldn’t it be great if we were to listen to all 24 songs of the cycle sang in a “normal” evening, not within the context of so-called serious music (whether this is a justified term or not), and above all to somehow turn these songs into Greek songs?’ This is how the Winter Journey came to be, based on the translation and adjustment of poems by German romantic poet Wilhelm Müller for Franz Schubert’s song cycle Winterreise.

Following this successful endeavour, Dionyssis Kapsalis has translated the poems of Heinrich Heine from Robert Schumann’s song cycle Dichterliebe for voice and piano.

This is a new attempt to transform important song cycles for voice and piano from the classical music repertory. The aim is to bring out an immediacy in terms of content: to understand the text and be moved by it.